i got a bulletproof heart, you got a hollow-point smile
by Allidon
Summary: The day after they meet, she pops up next to Tara in the hallway, smiling like she's pleased to see her, and just falls into step beside her on the way to English. She talks, not too much but enough to make it clear she's exactly where she means to be, and Tara answers back in as few words as possible because there's a warm feeling in her belly and she doesn't trust it at all.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is a No Zombies, High School AU. I was sure I remembered Tara's dad saying he had been in the army, and I used that fact to build up a lot of Tara's characterisation in this fic, but then when I re-watched Live Bait it seemed I was mistaken. So, for the purposes of the fic, her dad was in the army, having retired a short time before the start of the fic, so her character is a little different, obviously a little younger (maybe 16/17) and with more of an emphasis on the insecure parts of her personality that we saw in 4B. Hope it comes across ok.**

**Title is from Bulletproof Heart by My Chemical Romance. Hope you enjoy!**

* * *

The first time Tara meets Beth Greene, it's in math class, which seems like as a good a place as any to meet a person except that Tara _hates_ math and so associating it with any good memory at all seems just a little bit…wrong.

It's her third day at yet another new school—her dad's promised that this is the last time, that they're staying put, but she's not convinced of that at all—and she'd arrived five minutes late because she'd gotten lost, so when she finally entered the classroom, it had been with her trademark scowl and a glare for any one who'd dared look at her. She'd taken the only available seat, too worked up and anxious to pay much attention to the person sitting next to it, and had tried to focus on what the teacher was saying.

She doesn't really get the concept, but she does her best to apply it anyway, copying down the triangles and then trying to work out the missing dimensions.

She's erasing her workings out for the third time, getting increasingly frustrated, when the person next to her—she gets a flash of blonde hair in her peripheral vision as she stubbornly keeps her eyes on her book—leans over and whispers, "You're using the wrong formula."

The voice is soft, the accent thick but not harsh, and Tara can't help but look up. The girl sitting next to her is smiling, and not a mocking smile but a genuine, helpful one, and Tara blinks at her. "Huh?"

"The formula," she says, pointing at Tara's work book. "You need to use _cosine_ for that one, see here? Then you'll get it right."

"Oh," Tara says, and she looks down at where the girl's pointing. She's right, and Tara changes the formula and completes the diagram. "Thanks," she says, and she looks back up at the girl. She's pretty, Tara thinks, with a faint dusting of freckles over her nose and a cute little braid in her ponytail.

"I'm Beth," the girl says, big blue eyes looking at her.

"Tara," she says back, and then she smiles without even meaning to.

* * *

It's been a while since Tara had a friend; two years, maybe three. Two moves ago, anyway. She'd given up on them after that, had built up walls to keep people out because it hurts less in the long run. She'd only be leaving anyway, she reasons. She always ends up leaving.

The truth is, Beth's one of those people who Tara normally dislikes on principle. She's sweet and kind and genuinely _nice_, traits that Tara finds inexplicable on a good day, but somehow Beth gets under her skin. The day after they meet, she pops up next to Tara in the hallway, smiling like she's pleased to see her, and just falls into step beside her on the way to English. She talks, not too much but enough to make it clear she's exactly where she means to be, and Tara answers back in as few words as possible because there's a warm feeling in her belly and she doesn't trust it at all.

* * *

Beth does a lot of that, it seems, turning up when Tara least expects it. She's sitting alone in the cafeteria three days later, poking half-heartedly at whatever the hell her lunch is supposed to be, and then suddenly Beth's sliding in beside her, chattering about how she can't believe their Spanish teacher dropped a test on them without warning.

"What are you _doing_?" Tara asks suspiciously, because people don't sit with her at lunch. They give her a wide berth if anything, nudging each other as they pass.

"Eating lunch," Beth says, pulling out her pack-up and crunching on a carrot stick. "What are _you_ doing?"

"What does it look like?" she snaps, and then she frowns, regretting the harshness of her tone. "Why are you sitting _here_?"

Beth shifts to the side a little, looks at the seat of her chair. "Was someone else sitting here?" She looks back up at Tara as she shifts back into her seat, a mischievous little half-smile on her face.

There's an uncomfortable prickling on the back of Tara's neck. "No," she mutters defensively. "It's just…people don't sit with me."

"Well I am."

"But _why_?" she persists, unable to let it drop.

Beth snags a fry off Tara's tray. "Maybe I'm trying to be your friend."

"I don't need a friend," Tara mumbles, but she shoves her tray closer to Beth anyway.

They share the rest of the fries, and Beth tells a funny story about her dad trying to catch a sheep, and Tara thinks that maybe she might want a friend after all.

* * *

Beth sits with her every day at lunch after that, and Tara doesn't let herself acknowledge the fact that it's becoming a regular thing. She gets her lunch, sits at that same table, and inevitably Beth appears, brown paper bag in hand, and they end up sharing their lunches. Beth chatters a lot, as if she knows that Tara never knows quite what to say and wants to make it easier on her.

"Do you always talk so much?" Tara asks her one time, when Beth pauses for breath.

"Nope," Beth says, her voice light. "Just when I need to." She grins at Tara, and then offers her the open bag of chips.

* * *

She's been at the school maybe three weeks when Beth steps up her game a little. They've got double gym, and Tara's stopped halfway round the cross-country track to duck behind what looks like a disused shed for a much-needed smoke. She's lost in her own thoughts, and suddenly long fingers are curling over her shorter ones, snagging the cigarette and Beth's looking at her with her eyes all crinkled up as she takes a drag. Tara's so surprised that she chokes on her lungful of smoke, because Beth seems like such an archetypal good girl, daughter of the good Christian vet, and this is entirely unexpected. Beth arches an eyebrow at her, her cheeks hollowed out as she takes a drag, as if to say that she knows exactly what Tara's thinking. The trouble is, Tara half-thinks that Beth always knows what she's thinking.

Tara knows how people see her, what they think when they see her thick eyeliner and her nose ring, her battered leather jacket and her permanent scowl. She knows how they see her because that's exactly what her intention is, to keep people out.

There's something about the way that Beth smiles at her though that tells Tara that she sees right through her, right through the walls and the cold-bitch façade she's worked so hard to build, and it scares the crap out of her but somehow she just can't say no to her either.

They smoke together in silence that day, and the following week when Tara peels away from the rest of the class as they near the shed, she doesn't have to look back to know that Beth's right behind her.

* * *

It's the first really warm day of spring, and Tara's walking home, hands shoved into her pockets and music playing too loud, loud enough so she doesn't hear the footsteps behind her. She makes an embarrassing sort of squeak when Beth startles her by grabbing her shoulders from behind.

"Hey!"

She pulls her earphones out, trying to still her pounding heart. "What—" she gasps out, and then stops, breathes. "What did you do that for?"

"Just trying to scare you a little," Beth says, her voice teasing. "C'mon." She grabs Tara's hand and turns her back the way Tara's just come, and before she knows it they're crammed into a booth at the little coffee shop in town with three of Beth's friends.

"Iced coffee and air conditioning," Beth says. "We do this every year."

It's awkward as hell, and Tara sits in-between Beth and one of the other girls, her shoulders curled in, looking down at her hands and rubbing at the scar on her palm from when she fell off her bike one time as a kid. She doesn't know why Beth brought her along, and worse than that, she doesn't know why she let her just manoeuvre her here without so much as a question. She's getting used to Beth's company when it's just the two of them, has started adding her own snippets of conversation to Beth's, but here with these other girls that she doesn't know, somehow the words she needs just won't form in her head.

"…Tara's really good at English, right Tara?" Beth's voice filters through, and Tara jerks her head up a little too quickly.

"Um," she says, and her throat is tight, like it's almost closed up. "What?" Her voice comes out all strangled, and she can feel the heat rising in her cheeks.

Beth grins at her like she hasn't even noticed. "I was just saying, you're really good at English, and Rachel really needs help with studying for her mid-term, and I bet you could do that, right?"

"Um, I guess," Tara says, glancing across the table at the brunette who she vaguely remembers Beth introducing as Rachel. "I already did most of it last semester."

"Oh, that'd be awesome," Rachel beams back at her. "I'm going to Beth's on Friday to study, maybe you could come?"

Tara looks at Beth, who nods, and then back at Rachel. "Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I can do that."

* * *

Beth lives on a farm, and Tara knew that already, but she's not really prepared for the scope of it when Beth's mom drives them up to the house. She gets out of the car, turns right round in a big circle, and marvels at the fact that she can't see another house for miles. It's so _peaceful_.

When they get into the house, she stands awkwardly in the hallway as she takes it all in, takes in the kitschy furnishings and the traditional décor, the way it's somehow light and airy, like she's seen in magazines, but also cosy and welcoming at the same time. It feels lived in, like Beth and her family are somehow built into the very foundations of it, like there's a symbiotic flow from family to house and back again.

It feels like a _home_, in a way that no house she's lived in ever has.

"My mom made cookies," Beth says, breaking Tara out of her thoughts. "Here, gimme your jacket."

She hands it over, and then Beth leads them upstairs, passing several doors—"that's Shawn's room, he'll be back later, and Maggie's, she's still at college"—until they get to the end of the hallway and what Tara presumes is Beth's room.

Beth's room feels strangely like an extension of the rest of the house, but with her own unique stamp on it. There's a vintage metal bedstead up against one wall, piled high with cushions and a bedspread with ditzy flowers on it, but there's band posters stuck haphazardly above it in a way that jars with the rest of the furnishings. Tara glances across to the other side of the room to where Beth's got clothes hanging from the top of her closet door, and then she spots a guitar on a stand in the corner and a pile of sketchpads on the desk. _Yes_, she thinks. _It's definitely got Beth written all over it._

They sit together on Beth's bed, Rachel in the middle and Tara and Beth huddled on either side, and although they start off talking about the English project while they eat the cookies that Beth had brought up with them, they quickly veer off the subject and end up just chatting instead. Beth's talking about maybe starting a band, and Rachel's got a dance show coming up, and Tara says she's probably going to take her niece to the zoo at the weekend.

It feels a little weird, just sitting chatting with them, almost like something out of a teen movie, surreal like Tara could get yanked out of it at any moment. Yet somehow, she doesn't feel the risk quite so strongly as before, feels like maybe she can find a comfortable medium where she has friends without getting in too deep.

She should have known it wouldn't really be that simple.


	2. Chapter 2

She's not really sure how it happens, how it goes from study sessions to group trips to the movies to just her and Beth alone in Beth's house and Beth trying to teach her to play piano. Tara's fingers stumble over the keys, can't seem to stretch far enough or move quick enough to link any of the notes together, and Beth smiles, big and wide, squeezes next to her on the stool and splays her fingers over Tara's to show her again for the twelfth time that day.

It's ok, she tells herself at night when she can't sleep, when her mind plays tricks and reminds her of how easily it could be taken away, how all it takes is a phone call and her dad saying, "Guess we're on the move again pumpkin", how all of this could be for nothing. It's ok because it's controlled, because she's calling the shots, because she's just making the best of things and she could do without it just fine. She doesn't need Beth, or her friendship. She doesn't.

* * *

Everything changes on a humid afternoon in early April.

She gets home early, and the first thing she notices is that her sister's car is in the driveway. Lilly lives on the other side of town—the whole reason that their dad had decided to move here after he retired—and although they've seen more of her since they moved, Lilly still doesn't do 'just dropping in'. She makes appointments and has schedules and says 'let me see if I can fit you in' with her finger on the page in her diary, because she's organised and together like that while Tara just flounders her way through life never really fitting in anywhere. Lilly has everything sorted, has done for as long as Tara can remember; Lilly has a career and friends and a husband and a baby, has a five-year-plan and a ten-year-plan and probably more plans than Tara would know what to do with. Lilly is the 'good' daughter, is the way Tara sees it. Lilly is the kind of daughter anyone would be proud of, while Tara is the difficult one, the one who shuts people out, the one who barely knows what she's doing next week, let alone next year or the one after that.

She wonders why Lilly's here; stares at the car, all sleek and black, and finds all the worst-case scenarios she can think of. Lilly's sick. _Meghan's_ sick. Meghan's _dead_. No, she thinks quickly. No, if it were that then her father would have come to school, would have collected her in his beat-up old pickup truck, would have told her so she didn't come home to find out like this, not like this. Her heart's pounding in her chest now, her breathing is too fast, and she has to lean on the gatepost for a minute to calm it down, has to _inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale,_ deep and slow, counting it out, and then she crosses the driveway towards the front door, her head down and her shoulders curled in.

She slips in through the door, drops her backpack to the floor where she usually does. She finds Lilly in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her head in her hands. Her shoulders are shaking, and Tara feels sick. She's never seen Lilly cry before. The thoughts are there again, every single bad thing she can think of running through her head too fast for her to focus on_,_ and then her breathing is speeding up, her heart's going so fast she can almost feel it and she starts to back out of the room, but somehow Lilly knows she's there and she turns, looks at Tara with red-rimmed eyes and then Tara can't move.

Lilly gets up, wraps her arms around Tara, but Tara doesn't react, stays stiff as a board even as Lilly tries to pull her closer, tries to hold her the way she holds Meghan, but Tara can't, _won't_, crack.

Lilly manoeuvres her across the room, sits her down at the table, pours her some tea, tries to put a brave face on everything, but all Tara can hear is her blood rushing in her ears and all she can focus on is Lilly's mouth as she says the words, as she says _daddy_ and _lungs_ and _cancer_ and _smoking_ and Tara's stomach is churning, she's going to be sick, she's going to suffocate if she stays in this room any longer with Lilly looking at her like that and she pushes back from the table so hard that her chair topples over and then she runs, she runs out of the door and down her street and Lilly is shouting after her but she just keeps running, further and further away until she's gone so far that she's afraid to stop.

* * *

She's not sure when she starts running with intent, with a destination in mind, but it's probably a lot earlier than she'd like to admit. She gets to the Greene farm just as the sun is dipping below the tops of the trees, casting funny shadows over the open spaces, and they look ominous to her somehow, like a sign that bad things are going to happen. That bad things _are_ happening.

She remembers the feeling of home, the smell of cookies baking, a pastel room with a guitar in the corner, and she finds herself at the front door, banging on it so hard that her hand hurts but she can't stop, can't think, can't let herself focus on those words because the lump in her throat is getting bigger and her throat is getting tighter and she can't breathe, can't breathe, can't—

Beth opens the door and Tara is suddenly startled out of her panic because she doesn't know what to say, how to explain, where to even start. A strangled noise works its way out of her throat, somewhere between a gasp and a sob and a dry, nervous laugh, and Beth just looks at her for a long minute and then pulls her inside, wraps her arms tight around Tara and then finally she breaks and she's sobbing, sobbing so hard she feels like she might break in two, and Beth's arms are around her and Tara's face is pressed into the crook of Beth's shoulder. Beth holds her, a hand cradling her head and another between her shoulder blades, thumb rubbing back and forth, and she whispers soothing noises and Tara cries and cries until her sides ache, until her throat is raw, until her eyes burn and she's got no energy left for anything except to sag against Beth like her bones have turned to jelly.

Beth doesn't ask her anything, and Tara has never been more grateful for anything in her whole life.

* * *

She's not sure how, but somehow they end up in Beth's room and she curls onto Beth's bed, her head in Beth's lap and Beth's gentle, practised fingers stroking through her hair. It's weirdly soothing, and she almost falls asleep, almost forgets, except for the knot in her stomach.

She opens her eyes, looks up into Beth's clear and unflinching gaze.

"My dad has cancer," she says, and the knot loosens a tiny bit.

* * *

She stays for dinner—Beth's mom insists—and she fills the hole in her belly with warm food and gentle laughter and the way Beth's mom squeezes her shoulder every time she passes behind her.

Beth smiles, and Tara feels like she might be ok.

* * *

Her dad starts chemo, and within weeks it's like the life's been sucked out of him, like he's become a different person. His hair falls out and his cheeks sink in, he doesn't want to eat and some days he won't even get out of bed. Tara watches him from the doorway of his bedroom, just stands and watches as he sleeps, and she wonders if this chemo-thing is really going to make him better.

Lilly moves in, brings Meghan with her and leaves her husband behind. "He's not good with this kind of thing," she tells Tara, shifting Meghan on her hip as she stirs whatever it is she's making for dinner. "Some people just aren't, you know?"

Tara thinks it must be nice to have a husband who doesn't mind it when you move out.

* * *

She goes over to Beth's more and more, wraps herself in the warmth of the house, the closeness of the family, the safety of knowing that these people aren't _hers_ and so she can just leave whenever she needs to.

* * *

They get out of school early one day, just before lunch, and so Tara and Beth head into town to get pizza and window shop for prom dresses. Tara thinks the dress part is dumb, because even though she's friends with Beth now, even though sometimes she hangs out with Beth's whole group of friends and laughs in all the right places, even though she can feel her mask start to slip every now and then, most people don't see that. They still see exactly what Tara intends for them to see, and she's not intending to change that by going to prom.

Beth's excited though, rubbing fabric between her fingers, holding dresses up against herself, talking about colours and necklines and trying to get Tara involved, so she acts like she's interested and waits while Beth tries on a dark blue dress that flares out at the waist. She sashays out of the changing room like she's on a runway, does an exaggerated twirl and then grins across at Tara.

"What do you think?"

She looks beautiful, is what Tara thinks, even without the right shoes or her hair done up properly.

"It's nice," is what she says, and Beth beams.

"I think Jimmy might ask me to go," she says. "You know, from Biochem?"

Tara does know. Jimmy-from-Biochem is tall with blond hair and blue eyes, has strong muscles and plays on the football team. Jimmy-from-Biochem is always looking at Beth, sometimes talks to her in the hallway, leaning against her locker and acting like Tara's not there, cracking jokes and making Beth giggle in that just-right way, so that her eyes crinkle at the sides.

She's surprised that Jimmy-from-Biochem hasn't asked Beth already.

"Cool," she says. "He seems nice."

Beth frowns at her. "I wish you'd come," she says. "It'll be fun."

"Maybe," Tara says, her voice deliberately noncommittal. "It's not really my thing."

Beth's face falls a little, and she leaves the dress behind without making a decision.

They eat pizza and joke about their classmates, and Tara pretends that her stomach doesn't clench every time she thinks about Jimmy taking Beth to prom.

* * *

They're in Beth's room a couple of days later, cross-legged on the bed. Tara's braiding Beth's hair, or trying to at least. It's soft, slides through her fingers like silk, and she can't help but keep messing up just so she can keep touching it.

"Hey, Tara?" Beth says, twisting her head a little. "Did you ever kiss a boy?"

Tara frowns at her, unease pooling in her stomach. "Huh?" she says, stalling for time.

"I kissed a boy in church group once," Beth confides. "It was weird though, not like I expected. Kind of…wet."

Tara makes a noise of acknowledgment, drops the half-finished braid and twists her fingers together. She thinks of a girl with warm brown eyes and curly black hair.

"What about you?" Beth presses her. "Have you ever—?"

"A couple of times," Tara says. "Nothing special."

Beth nods, thinking. "Maybe you have to really like the person for it to feel good?" She's got a dreamy look on her face, and Tara wonders if she's thinking about Jimmy.

"Maybe," Tara echoes softly. "Maybe."

* * *

On a bright Saturday in May, she and Beth head down to the lake near Beth's house. Beth's mom packs them a picnic, with sandwiches and fruit and fresh-baked muffins, and they spend the whole day there, swim and eat and lie back against the soft grass, looking up at the sky and making pictures out of the clouds.

"I like it out here," Beth says. "It's so quiet. My house is too loud with Maggie back for the summer."

Tara's not sure what to say in response. _My house is too quiet,_ she thinks. Everyone tiptoeing around, the tight look of fear on her sister's face, the way her dad looks like he's aged a decade overnight. There's nowhere to hide in silence.

It's strange though, that she doesn't _want_ to hide when she's here, alone in the woods with Beth. There's a strange, almost uncontrollable urge to let everything out, all at once.

The thought both intrigues her and terrifies her in pretty much equal measure.

* * *

On the day of the prom, Beth somehow convinces Tara to come over and help her get ready. Tara's not really sure how she gets roped into it, given that Beth has plenty of other friends who are far better at that girly shit than she is, but she agrees anyway, catches a ride home from school with her and sits in the kitchen chatting with Beth's mom while Beth's in the shower.

There's something effortless about Beth's mom, something in the way she just does everything with ease and grace, the way she just welcomes people in without question, that Tara would usually find intimidating but somehow actually find comforting instead. She wonders if maybe that's what her mom would have been like, except that her mom would be wearing the jacket that Tara's long claimed as her own, and her mom would be like a cool mom that listened to rock music instead of the country stuff that plays in the kitchen at Beth's house, and her mom would belong to her and not be on loan from somebody else.

The cookie she's eating suddenly tastes like cardboard, and there's a lump in her throat.

"Are you ok, dear?" Annette's looking at her with concern, and Tara fakes a smile.

"Fine, just not very hungry today," she says, and then Beth's calling from upstairs and she takes the excuse to leave.

When she gets to Beth's room, Beth is sitting at her little vanity table, wearing a fluffy robe and pinning up the top of her hair so she can start blow-drying it. She spots Tara in the mirror, and Tara sees the start of her smile just as Beth turns round and full-on beams at her.

Tara stands around awkwardly for a moment, unsure of where she's supposed to fit into this, and then Beth gets up and drags over the other chair from the corner. She positions it next to the table, so that when Tara sits down they're facing each other, and Tara slowly starts to realise that Beth doesn't need any actual _help_ getting ready. She's not entirely sure what that means, why Beth invited her over, but she thinks maybe it means that Beth just wanted to hang out with her. She's just not sure how she feels about that.

The chatter about nothing for over an hour while Beth gets ready, dries her hair straight, then pins it up and curls the loose tendrils at the front, works some magic with make up that makes her eyes look even bigger and bluer than usual and gives her cheekbones to die for. The only part that Beth actually needs any help with is the dress, stepping into it gracefully and then turning her back to Tara and looking over her shoulder expectantly.

"Zip me up?"

Tara's trying not to stare, she really is, and when she stands up and crosses the room, she's careful to make sure that her hands stay on the fabric of the dress as she pulls the zipper up.

Beth doesn't seem to notice Tara's awkwardness, moves back towards her wardrobe to get her shoes while Tara just stands rooted to the spot. Beth's mom shouts up the stairs that Jimmy's here. Tara's chest hurts.

"How do I look?" Beth says, turning back to face her and striking a pose. Tara swallows, leans forward and twists a strand of Beth's hair so it curls better.

"You look…really beautiful," she says, her voice thick. Beth's mom shouts up to them again, and Tara feels strangely light-headed.

Before she even thinks about it, before she can stop herself, she takes a step forward, and then another, until she's close enough to see Beth's eyes widen the tiniest bit just as Tara leans in and presses her lips against hers. For the briefest, beautiful moment, her mind is clear, is totally focused on the soft press of her mouth against Beth's, but then she's suddenly self-aware again, suddenly crushingly conscious of what she's doing, of the way that it's awkward and clumsy, that her nose is crushed against Beth's cheek and Beth isn't moving, isn't reacting, and _shit_ this suddenly seems like the dumbest thing she's ever done and she pulls back and mumbles a mixture of curses and apologies and then she does the only thing she can think of.

She runs.


End file.
